Some upgrades are coming to Anson B. Nixon Park in Kennett Square and Kennett Township. KAPA, the Kennett Area Park Authority, is in the midst of a $7.2 million capital campaign to revamp the old waterworks complex. However, it will take a few years before things get rolling.
The area in question is on the lower level of the park, near the community garden.
According to Richard Lyon, past chairman of KAPA, said they’re looking to transform several of the old buildings, which were a part of the old waterworks, into classrooms, offices, and a workshop.
“What we’ve been trying make this a wonderful community asset and also make it a safe place for our staff to work and store our equipment. We’re really trying to professionalize this operation,” he said. “At the moment, we don’t have a visitors’ center, we don’t have bathrooms, we don’t have office space, we don’t have Wi-Fi or anything in the park.”
Lyon added that people had the foresight 30 years ago to set land aside for the park, and now KAPA is trying to figure out how to fund it and run it. He said the park only gets a third of its funds from the borough and the township. The park is not supported by tax dollars, he added, but KAPA wants to make it better.
Part of the project is to bring the old buildings — where the water came in and settled, another where the water was filtered, and a third where the water was pumped around the community. There was also a building that was once used as a boxing club run by former Kennett Square Police Chief Albert McCarthy. But the buildings are no longer needed for those purposes and haven’t been for years.
“The buildings had been used for many purposes, and what we’re trying to do now is bring them back to life,” Lyon said.
The idea is one of adaptive reuse, to transform one of the buildings into an indoor/outdoor classroom and community space.
“It’s a place where we can run horticultural classes,” he said. We want to create more of a teaching and outreach program. At the moment, there’s nothing in the schools around here where anyone is teaching horticulture, agriculture, or ecology.”
There will also be classes for adults as well as children.
He added that with more apartments going up in the area, some of the space could be used, but those apartment dwellers to have their own gardens. Lyon said there could be a cost associated with those private gardens, but he wasn’t sure what that cost might be.
There will also be some open outdoor areas for a variety of uses.
“We want a space that is unlike any other community space that could open up to a big plaza,” Lyon said. “While we have a primary function of education, we want them to be available for the public to use.”
“We want to teach about water ecology, where clean water comes from and where the dirty water goes,” Lyon said. “The park was all built around water, so we want to make water a part of the feature, but we also want to make it fun.
One of the other ideas is to have a splash pad where kids (or adults) can walk through an area that is flat but has fountains coming up, so they can get wet on a hot summer day.
The whole idea is about education and family play.
The fundraising is crucial for the project, especially since, as Lyon reiterated, only a third of the p[ark’s revenue comes from the township and the borough, and the park doesn’t exist on taxes.
KAPA has a small portion of the funds raised but needs much more. Of the $7.2 million, $2 million comes from various grants, state, federal, and private.
Sharon Cullen, the capital campaign assistant, said the project will likely be done in phases, so they can’t start work on some of the plans without the need to wait for all the money to come in. As it stands now, there might not be any movement on the project for another two years.
Those who are interested in donating to the project can go to https://www.ansonbnixonpark.org/donate, and those interested in the project can go here https://www.ansonbnixonpark.org/waterworks.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
